In the article of September I wrote that I think mindset is the biggest issue we have to overcome to change towards a circular economy. Thereby I mean changing from seeing the importance towards freeing time to make a change in your daily work. We are all busy keeping up with our duties that it is an extra effort to stop, reflect and act.

What can a designer do to change this mindset?

Kate Fletcher explained a few ideas in her book Fashion & Sustainability, design for change.Facilitator“ ‘traditional’ design practices such as sketching, prototyping and making will still exist, but there will be much greater emphasis placed on ‘designing’ activities, ideas and platforms of the systems and behaviours that shape your industry as a whole. Fashion designers will move from working in the supply chain to working at the ‘ hub’ of change, using their skills differently - envisioning change, organizing it and enabling something different to happen.” For example:

Co-design with users,

Organise clothes swaps,

Sell patterns to users,

Educate users how to wear and care for their garments,

ActivistChanging the traditional fashion sector institutions from both inside and outside with doing research and sharing knowledge. For example making a statement with a fashion performance or totally different: The Fibreshed project, started with researching fibres and plants for colouring available within 240 kilometer of her home has now grown to include mapping of the suppliers, documenting their lives, tracing the local economies associated with fibre production.

EntrepreneurChanging the values of a business, for example not valuing growth but the quality of work. Claudy Jongstra is a Dutch designer who selectively chooses the number of people for whom she creates work.Another example is not earning money by making garments up front, but only making items based on crowdsourcing like is possible through Betabrand.